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1+1=3...

Homer Page taught me how to see.He gave me an assignment once, and I didn't do a very good job of it, so I abandoned the project. He wanted me to go out and find companion images of things that, when placed side by side, would produce a third image. He wanted to do this to teach me that what a viewer sees in an image is both the literal, objective elements of it, but also the subjective elements of it...in their minds. When placed side by side, as in a photo spread in a magazine or on a wall, they tend to merge in the viewer's mind and a third image arises that connects the two. And, this is entirely subjective and interactional, i.e., it means that the viewer creates their own photograph based on the two seen and collaborates with the photographer in the art form itself.We called this, 1+1=3.It is unexpectedly hard to do. It requires the photographer to continuously scan the subject being photographed with an eye toward remembering something they may have photographed before. A daunting task. But, what a photographer sees can often trigger the memory of something else once seen. And, it is in that serendipitous event in the photographer's mind that the potential for related and combined images can exist.So, I present below some of my attempts, sometimes feeble and at times certainly stretched, to do this project. Others will be added as I scan the archives of my work and possibly see patterns of work that I didn't originally see as being connected. RPW